Has anyone noticed their job board does not list the reimbursement for most shops, especially if the shop requires a training session?

They have movie theater, home improvement, gas shops and more that I am interested in, but without knowing the fee/reimbursement I am hesitant to go through their video training and take a test to find out I'm going to make $3.00! I've noticed what they call "commission" can be quite low on some shops.

Does anyone have input?

AFTER you take the training, I think you can click on a shop and another window opens with details. Usually awful fees, $5-7. See previous posts about CORI. We saved you the trouble of looking for the fees.

Thank you!

Who the heck is doing these shops??

18-yea-olds, maybe. They all get done by month's end. Sometimes they do bonus the leftovers around the 28th.

LOL, that explains why I don't want them!

Sometimes you can get more for the job if you ask them.

Ask anytime after the 12th of the month. You might be suprised...

The first job I did was $ 20. I thought that was great. The same job next month was $5. After I pay For gas and paypal there is not much leftover

$5 shops = no good.

In my opinion.

Yes, the general consensus is that CORI is not interesting until/unless bonused substantially. It makes sense in your spare time to do the training so you are ready if/when the shops get bonused so that you can swoop in and grab them (and see what the pay is up to for those requiring training). I only look at their site about once a week to see what is 'maturing' towards bonusland. In my area there are waaay too many people willing to grab pizza or gas shops long before they get to bonus age. Some people never learn.

I received an email from CRI regarding postal surveys that pay $25. The email was sent to me because I had completed the last round of these shops. No - wasn't me.

For anyone that really did do this shop, how'd it go and would you do it again?

$25 POSTAL shops??? What do they make you do, actually deliver the mail? LOL

I wonder what they entail, and I wish they were here!

In part, this is what I received:

"We have another round of Postal Surveys being requested by (bleepity-bleep) and you are being contacted because you completed the last round for us. I need to know if you are interested in doing these again for us and have them scheduled by February 20, 2009 with the mailings beginning on April 1, 2009 for two weeks. The commission for these shops is set at $25.00. This is a shop that will involve you mailing bundles through the postal service within a specified zip code area on a daily basis except for Saturday or Sunday for two weeks. If you are interested in doing the next round of shops for us you will need to contact me directly so that I can assign you and be sure that your address is correct on our data base so that we can Fedex your bundles to you."

Sound familiar?

Yes, I know of the shop but have never seen it in my area. The gal I know who does them drives by the post office every day on her way to her kids' school so it is a minor detour at most. She finds it is worthwhile, but realize that 5 days per week for 2 weeks is 10 trips at $2.50 each so it had best be along your usual daily route. In my area there are virtually no mailboxes except at post offices and I gather the bundles are larger than I would want to put in my mailbox even if I was given my home address zip to mail in.

I am sticking to my 5.00 boycott and when they get upo to 19.00 I will fo them. I am not working for nothing.

I did some shops for CRI. But it was when I was first doing shops. It is a great way to get some experience. After that I only do shops for them if they are very close by and it was great to pick up some extra change since they pay once a week.

I wouldn't do those postal shops. Not for $2.50 a stop. So not worth it to park and get out of my car for $2.50,

Most of our post offices here have drive through drop boxes so that is not a big issue. But nevertheless these would make sense only if you needed to drop in a drive-through box on a route you take daily (such as picking up kids from school, etc.).

CRI gets people to shop who are in need of that quick pay feature and often who just don't realize there is better stuff out there.

Boy, I HATE that! : ) Sounds like Market Force.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2009 01:23PM by SusanMB.

CRI has THEATRE shops?? I did not know that.. I have never seen them.. I badly need some theatre shops.
I had done work for tes for quite a while but their new dispatchers.. ugh.. yuk! They are horrible! They are rude, they don't nada for pay...

Just a bummer all the way around. One blockbuster weekend I did the entire 3 day job b/c my dispatcher told me that was what the job entailed... I only got paid for ONE single day.. and those were 13 hours days too!!!
The VP of that place is mean... I just don't want to deal with them anymore....

It's too bad cuz they used to be quite good to work for, and quite helpful in every aspect of their movie checks.. No more.....Stay away from TES.

I think it is such a shame when CoRI comes out with their gas station mystery shops and they offer $4 plus $1 gas reimbursement and $1 in-store reimbursement. The only time I'll take any of those is if I'm in that town anyway and I need to buy gas anyway. However, when they start to bonus their shops, I start to get interested fast. I remember one Saturday after I closed my store at 2PM, I was trying to figure out what I would do for the rest of the day. It was a gorgeous day out, about 85 degrees with hardly any wind. I happen to find out that CoRI had 3 gas shops that they needed done this month yet (this was on the 29th) and they were paying $75 for each one. So I decided to do all 3 of them. The only problem was the fact that 1 of them was 275 miles away, the 2nd was 310 miles away and the last one was 350 miles away. I jumped on my GoldWing (very nice day for a motorcycle ride) and took off. 10 hours and 700 miles later I was back and it was a little after midnight. I'll admit I did go a little over the speed limit but I thought $225 for an afternoon and evening of basically riding my motorcycle was not a bad deal at all. The reports are real simple, I think I did all 3 in about 30 minutes. Nowadays, they don't bonus their shops like that anymore so I think there must have been some policy changes made at their headquarters. And just as one more thought, there have been times when they have bonused some of their shops but I didn't think it was enough for me so I emailed them and offered to do the shops if they could increase their bonus to XX dollars. Most of the time they have been willing to work with me in situations like that.

There are times when it all comes together for a nice afternoon/evening jaunt that makes some nice bucks. I haven't seen any decent bonuses from CoRI for quite some time because shoppers in my area pick them off as soon as they post and I am hardly willing to be a 'backup shopper' on a shop committed to $4! Last month there were some banks with a different company that gave me a beautiful afternoon ride through the countryside to some virtually shopper free areas for 129 miles and $125. With our little Civic hybrid, that came out to about 3 gallons of gas

I am pretty much done working for this company. I no longer do shops for under $15... They want 3? not worth my time.

reefshoe Wrote:
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> I am pretty much done working for this company. I
> no longer do shops for under $15... They want 3?
> not worth my time.


I just signed up for 4 shops and they totaled $177.16. It will take me about 4-5hrs to do them, mostly drive time and $40 in gas. Still I come out with about $32 a pop. Reports takes about 10 minutes. The key is to wait it out. Beats doing 30-40 of the $3 shops.

Here, you would wait forever and never get that money. They just don't go up here over 10 bucks except once in a blue moon.

Emdisco, I usually do have to drive some distance to do jobs due to my location, but in that equation you are figuring up, including the cost of gas, are you also factoring in the wear on your car?

There is so much vitriol for this MSC all around on every message board that I read, It seems that anyone who works for them will eventually feel bitter or have a bad experience.

The problem with waiting for commissions to go up and then taking the shops is that you support their system of a sliding commission scale, and lower pay all around, when you do that. That extra dollar taken from 30 of the $3 gas shops is what makes it possible for you to get a $32 commission on a single shop.

lisams901 Wrote:
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> Emdisco, I usually do have to drive some distance
> to do jobs due to my location, but in that
> equation you are figuring up, including the cost
> of gas, are you also factoring in the wear on your
> car?


Yeh @ about $0.39 a mile according to the US government, A year ago today I did not have a car. I bought this car in Sept 2009 and I have been driving it ever since. I have to have a car to hit the road and I do that. If I keep making $150 plus a trip, it won't be long before I can afford another. I have BIG bills to pay so as long as I keep it maintained and if it keeps running, I am going to keep moving. BTW, I paid $950 for my vechicle. I will recoup that in mileage fees alone. Wear and tear is a part of automobile ownership isn't it? I own this car, not the other way around.

SteveSoCal Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> The problem with waiting for commissions to go up
> and then taking the shops is that you support
> their system of a sliding commission scale, and
> lower pay all around, when you do that. That
> extra dollar taken from 30 of the $3 gas shops is
> what makes it possible for you to get a $32
> commission on a single shop.

Steve,

I disagree with that assumption. The problem is that not enough people are willing to wait for it to go up that high. IThe onlty thing I support is not working for $3. My average shop for this company before these last four jobs was $16.96 per. These jobs bumped it up to $23.03 per. What I am supporting is my family and bill collectors. If people are not willing to wait for higher prices with full knowledge that they will get higher, then I am not to blame. I don't support a sliding scale system, I use it to my advantage. I have only been a mystery shopper for 8 months. The system was already in place when I got here. I've read all of the posts on this company, many before I started in this business and many are singing the same tune......They start their shop at too low a price. Well, you self assign all of these jobs, so you don't have to sign up for them. To me it is as simple as that. I can't make this company start these jobs at a higher price and they can't make me accept them. So we are even. Time is on my side not theirs. They got to get them done to stay in business. I'm going to do the shops for them or another company after they lose the contract. I take advantage of the situation, not let the situation take advantage of me.

I have to disagree as well. Shoppers take what is offered to them and companies pay what they can get away with. Lets say that there are 3000 stations to be shopped and the company wants to spend no more than $12,000 on fees (for whatever reason). If they post them all at $4, they will still have a whole bunch left at the end of the month and their fee pot will be empty of any possible bonuses to get them done.

If, however, they post them at $3 and get half of them done, they will still have $7500 to play with to get the other half done. So they raise the fee for the remaining ones to $4 and get half of the rest of them done. They now have only 750 shops to go and $4500 to get them done. They go up to $5 and get 250 of them done, they now have 500 to get done and $3250 for that purpose. Ultimately some shoppers will get paid very well and will tell others what a great killing they made, which encourages us all to check for late month bonuses. Fair to those who helped them from the start? No. Profitable for those who wait? Possibly. A business savvy move? Definitely. An obnoxious abuse of the help? Absolutely.

My real issue is the pure arrogance of negotiating a contract that is designed to pay ANY shoppers as little as $3 for a shop with photographs, anything more than minimal cursory of observations and more than 3-5 yes/no questions.